Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

The purpose of this document is to provide the necessary steps to setup a Cisco Call Manager to run on VMware. I’ve been researching for a while to get Call Manager installed, but there had been too many confusing articles in the forums, and not everybody could retrieve support information from Cisco itself. As an employee of a Technology Development Partner of Cisco, I was entitled to order CUCM Partner Bundle Offering (UC8.0.2-K9-PBO) and received a bunch of DVDs to install. The DVD could install on an HP DL 360, which I don’t have. Any other hardware I had available did not meet the “installer” requirement and

therefore I’ve chosen to install CUCM on VMware.

This is the LAB drawing, I am using. A main site connected to another site with a WAM simulator to introduce latency and packet drops for later usage.

10.0.0.81 10.0.0.83 192.168.10.81 192.168.10.254 192.168.10.60 DNS & SMTP 10.0.0.253 192.168.10.72

NetFlow Collector PacketCapture192.168.10.79 192.168.10.73 SNMP 2.2.2.6 2.2.2.5 10.0.0.51 S P A N T-DSL WAN-SIM 10.0.0.2 Test-Client 192.168.10.253 IP 192.168.10.101 Cisco-7960 IP 10.0.0.101 192.168.10.105 CUCM NOTE: This is installed on an ESXi Server REQUIREMENTS

• Hardware to support 64bit for ESX i.e. HP Proliant DL140 • Cisco IP Phone 7960 (the one I have)

• Cisco IP Phone 7940 (the one I have)

• VMware – ESXi 4.1 (don’t use ESX for CUCM – I tried and failed) • Cisco Unified Communication Manager 8.0(3a)

• Cisco IP Communicator on Test Client

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

Download ESXi

Downloading and licensing vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) To download and activate ESXi 4.x:

1. Navigate to

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vsphere_hypervisor_esxi/4. 2. Click Download next to VMware ESXi 4.x.

Log in using your VMware login credentials and complete the VMware vSphere Hypervisor Registration form after which an activation email is delivered to your inbox.

3. Navigate to your email inbox to find the activation email. If you do not receive the activation email, see Not receiving activation email for evaluation and free products (1026455).

4. Click Activate your VMware ESXi License and access your download. This gives you the serial key for ESXi 4.x.

Install ESXi

Once you have written the downloaded ISO Image on a CD or DVD, insert the disk into the CDROM and boot. This should initiate the install process and get you a brand new ESXi Server. If you need help for installing, please refer to VMware support site.

Prepare ESXi for a new server

If you don’t have an OVA Template for installing CUCM on ESXi, you will need to create a new

Start vSphere client and connect to ESXi Server

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

Click on Next

You may have a different data store layout. Choose one, where you have at least 85 GB available

Highlight the chosen data store and click on Next

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) and click on Next

2 GB Memory should be sufficient – click on Next

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

Create a virtual Disk with 80GB Capacity – click on Next

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

After the new Virtual Machine has been created, there is one more task to do in order to boot from CDROM

Change from Client Device to Host Device, make sure you also check Connect at power on – Click on OK

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

If you had created a virtual machine, as I outlined in the beginning of that document, the server hardware detection script should successfully validate for a “simple” Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

Click YES to continue

This time, click No

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

Select your time zone - For Central European Time choose Etc/GMT+1

No changes for MTU size for that standard setup

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

Provide the nessary entries for the static network configuration

Enter the DNS Server entries and the domain – click on OK

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

Provide all entries for to enable CUCM to create a certificate

Enter only valid and reachable NTP Server entries. If the setup script is not able to verify connection, you cannot continue the setup

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

If you want to use SMTP for this machine, press yes

Create an Application User Name, which will be used to log into the WEB Gui – Again, make sure you remember the password

Setup Cisco Call Manager on VMware

There will be a final reboot and then you should a login prompt. Open a web browser and connect to the CM Administration --- > https://192.168.10.105:8443